The brake pedal is often touted as one of the strongest part of a car and it is not surprising to see a wide variety of pedal locks in the after-market and literature compare to other vehicle locks such as that for securing the steering wheel (often contrasted as the softest) and gear stick. Vehicle pedal locks available in the market may be categorized into one of two types, i.e. removable locks and installed locks. Removable locks are those that are used to lock the pedals to render the pedal inoperable. Upon unlocking, the pedal lock may be removed and put away in a safe distance from the pedals such as under the driver seat, drawer under the seat, front passenger foot area, etc. which is within the driver's easy reach. Examples of such removable locks are People's Republic of China patent no. CN-201943467-U (He) which secures the pedal against the steering column while the rest, PRC patent No. CN 101531176 (Lin), British Patent No. GB-2,393,165 (Wu), U.S. Pat. No. 6,298,696 (Vito), U.S. Pat. No. 6,575,001 (Simon), U.S. Pat. No. 6,575,002 (Hsu), U.S. Pat. No. 6,792,780 (De Lucia), U.S. Pat. No. 6,976,374 (Dougherty), and U.S. Pat. No. 7,412,859 (Lycoudis) is secured against the vehicle floor.
When the vehicle is braked hard, it is possible that such removable lock's momentum would cause it to be dislodged from its resting place and pushed forward into the foot pedal area, thus posing obstruction to the foot pedals' operation and impeding the brake, acceleration and clutch functions. Such dangers may be mitigated by having the pedal lock permanently installed in the vehicle by bolting or anchoring it to an immovable part of the vehicle such as the floor board or steering column. Examples of such floor-anchored pedal locks include PRC patent No. CN-200988477 (Li), while WO 2004108488 (Eladio) and U.S. Pat. No. 6,662,894 (claiming priority of TH 0103000295 Watchara Chantrasuwan as inventor/applicant, licensed to Suwat Petcharapirat) requires permanent clamping onto the steering column. The locking or immobilizing principle of the installed to pedal locks are basically the same as the removable locks, i.e. telescopically or outwardly retracting a member which bars, clamps or blocks the pedal or pedal arm from operation.
In this specification, the vehicle “floor” or “floor board” is used interchangeably to broadly cover the rigid floor portion of a vehicle and which may continuously extend to the “firewall” portion separating the cabin from the engine compartment. While the user or driver would outwardly pull a lever or handle at the upper end proximal to the driver to retract the pedal blocking member into locking position which blocks the pedal or pedal arm, this blocking member could also be pushed or jerked into locking position by a sudden impact or collision force. Such events may accidentally lock up the foot pedal, rendering it non-operational, which is dangerous especially if the brake pedal is accidentally locked whereby the driver would not be able to stop the vehicle after such an initial impact or collision.
Thus, anti-locking mechanism is introduced to prevent accidental locking, such as that disclosed in WO 2011/087463 (Kantajaraniti), wherein the pedal blocking member may be latched by a small part such as a spring-biased pin (11) from being moved into locking position until the user releases the latch and allowing the pedal blocking member to be pulled into locked position. The question remains whether such safety latch would fail in face of impact force as it is mechanically a small component in form of a pin, spring or notch standing in the way of the heavier pedal blocking member being pushed by a huge external force.